Over the past decade, this Sussex songstress has skilfully walked the divide between country and blues without ever quite pinning her colours to any generic mast. But if there’s a genre that increasingly springs to mind on listening to her first solo outing in three years, it’s soul.
Flame and Diamond In The Dark are superb smouldering numbers with hints of Randy Crawford in Wilde’s strikingly emotive tones, and she even seems to channel Aretha Franklin’s iconic vocal stylings on Loving You.
Then Begging For Love has a bassline closely related to Bill Withers’ Who Is He, but she uses it superbly on a sharp-tongued riposte to an errant lover.
Elsewhere, though, the lush acoustic and tinkling piano of Let Me Be Your Sunshine and Open Road return us to more familiar territory. But in either case, when you’ve got songs as strong as these, you can dress them up however you please./o:p
